Light as a feather falling, she placed her other hand between his collarbones, where his fingers had lingered a moment ago. A pink flush swept over his neck and face. Her fingers slid up and around, to the back of his head, into his hair, twisting the long, silky strands. “And if I pull here—”
He shivered, yielding to her tug. Letting his breath out, he opened his mouth a little, and she thought, surely, this would be the moment he’d kiss her. Instead, very slowly, he touched the silver locket nestled between her breasts. “What’s in there?” he asked.
Her eyes glued to his face, she fumbled with the clasp and opened it, revealing the lock of golden hair coiled inside.
“Whose hair—” he started, and stopped. He wasn’t the only man with that particular shade of dark Amrian gold, and yet it was perfectly plain that the lock was his.
She shut the locket, watching him closely as confusion and desire fought in his eyes.
“Amron,” she said.
And then someone knocked on the door.
He shook his head as if waking from a dream, and went to open it. He exchanged a few words with someone standing outside, and when he turned, closing the door, he had a bundle of clothes in his arms.
The moment was gone, she saw it clearly, and the uncanny recognition that had cracked his shell and made him show hisdesire evaporated into thin air. He was back to his old self: restrained, careful, hiding behind good manners.
“I got a little carried away a moment ago. I apologize if I made you uncomfortable,” he said.
“You didn’t,” she said, but there was no going back to intimacy, not when his mind was already on different things.
“I got you a uniform, it’s the least suspicious thing I could get at this hour. My mother has female guards; in a palace this crowded, no one will question you.”
He laid it on the chair and turned away from her once more. There was nothing left to do but put it on. At least it was practical and it had trousers, high-waisted and tied at the ankles, along with a shirt and a short tunic with the royal emblem. A leather belt—without the sword, unfortunately—and a pair of leather sandals came with it. The whole ensemble fit her surprisingly well, almost as if Amron knew her exact measurements. Or had spent more time watching her than she was aware of.
She plaited her hair. “Do you have something I could tie it with?” she asked.
He rummaged through his drawers and came up with a satin ribbon, royal blue like her uniform. “This should do,” he said.
It might have been a coincidence, but more probably, it was some god’s idea of a joke. Liana trembled as she touched the ribbon, an exact copy of the one his last letters to her had been tied with.
Somewhere beyond the divine curtain, two days and seventeen years away, he was dead, gone from the world, unattainable to her. A sense of desperate urgency overcame her, the need to grab his wrist, pull him close, and kiss him roughly. But that wouldn’t do. The deal was for him to kiss her, not the other way round.
“Is everything alright?” he asked.
It was a matter of life and death, she was supposed to weigh her words carefully, consider the gods’ game, the stakes,the people involved, the possible outcomes. She ought to have strategized, even if she’d never strategized before. But standing close enough to him that she could feel his warmth had robbed her of any tactic she’d believed she had.
“What if you could step away from all this right now?” she blurted out.
“Step away?” His gaze cooled down. “What do you mean?”
“Leave all this behind, the court, the struggle, the impending conflict, all that burdens you, all the unhappiness.”
“Leave it how? Board a ship and sail away? Run into the woods?” A wan smile twisted his mouth.
“It’s a little more complicated than that,” she said. “And a little more final. Like stepping into another world, similar to this one, but also different. A world where you knew me once and could know me again.”
The invitation turned the impossible to possible, and she could almost hear the pieces of the puzzle clicking into place for him, the inexplicable intimacy, the details she knew about him, the immediate feeling of belonging, of fitting together like two halves of a life maliciously broken by the gods.
“It would be just the two of us,” she pointed out, although she was sure he’d figured out as much. “And I don’t know what that world would look like.”Ravaged by the war you failed to stop.“But we’d have each other.”
His gaze was intense, curious, and seeing he hadn’t refused it immediately gave her the courage to continue.
“I know you’ve wondered what it would feel to be ordinary, just a normal man unburdened by the royal duties, the demands of the court. To make your own way in the world, without the privilege you were born into, without the demands made by others, without the rigid list of expectations you have to fulfill. It would allow you to see what you are really made of.”
He averted his eyes to hide the hunger in them. It was a futilemove, because she’d always known it was there. It ate him from the inside, the thought that all his achievements had stemmed from his privilege, from the fact that he’d been born as the king’s son. Even though every person who knew him could’ve told him that his kindness, courage, diligence, had nothing to do with his status, and that he worked as hard and fought as bravely as any of his clerks and soldiers, there was always a part of him that wondered,what if?
“It would allow you to shape the world around you with nothing but your sword, your quill, your tongue, and see how far you could get.”
